Comfort
by annuscka
Summary: When Bellatrix Black awoke in the middle of the night, there was only one who would understand and ease her worries. The teenage Bellatrix and Rodolphus have a nightly talk about their dreams for the future.


**Disclaimer: **Love JKR; don't own these.

**A/N: **This is a one-shot and part of a Lestrange project I have planned, a collection of stories meant to cover their lives from their teens to their deaths. We'll have to see how it all works out with that, but I hope you enjoy this one!

Also, thank you to**_ Lady Rhian _**for the extremely swift and helpful beta-ing!

**Lincolnshire, August 1969**

The moonlight illuminated the countless rows of greenhouses on the yard; Reynard Lestrange was a passionate Herbologist and had collections of most known herbs in his gardens. He was also away on excursions most of the time, currently in Senegal looking for a rare sort of tea, and never had any idea of what went on underneath his roof. It was quite convenient.

The estate was very large. From the bedroom window she could see extensive fields and the edge of the forest Rabastan practised Quidditch in, but nothing to give the impression that there were other people anywhere within a day's flight. ("That's because there aren't," Rodolphus had scoffed when she first had pointed it out.) He had grown up in central London, and hadn't yet come to terms with the forced move to the countryside after his mother's death almost four years ago. But Bellatrix didn't mind the emptiness. Something about the endless fields and starlit sky made concentrating on things that mattered easier, both when they worked in the days and when she sat up thinking during the nights. Of course, that could also be due to the fact that there were none of her mother's endless parties to attend, or the stifling atmosphere of too much expensive clutter. Indeed, while the Lestrange estate was huge and the grounds well cared for, the house on them was old, creaking, and showed few signs of the family's publishing fortune. And she liked it. Here, there was no need to pretend. Here, they could do everything they wanted without any interruptions or interference from parents or annoying sisters. For all Rabastan's faults, he at least had sense enough to keep out of their way.

A gust of wind toyed with her hair, and she attempted to cover her chilly feet with the long robe. She had wrapped Rodolphus's robe around her when she had got out of bed – she hadn't been able to find her own in the mess of bedding, robes and books that they had made of the room since locking themselves in three days ago. But even if she had been able to locate her robe, she would still have preferred his – it wasn't the first time she had curled up on his desk in front of the window, and after several nights by the liberally leaking window, she knew that the more fabric she had to wrap around herself, the better.

Exactly why she kept waking up in the early hours of the morning while he peacefully slept on she didn't know, but it didn't much bother her. On the contrary, she quite liked it. She never actually really looked at anything that went on outside the window, regardless of whether or not there was something happening, but staring out over the quiet surroundings, she could see a lot inside her head. The images played before her eyes were vivid, alive; more often than not they left her out of breath and with a pounding heart.

Often, she saw green light, and then His symbol shooting through the sky. The sight of it terrified common people, but to her it was the uttermost symbol of hope , and she desperately longed to see it, just like she longed to be where it was. But she never knew where the Death Eaters were, only that they were out there in the moonlight somewhere, hidden by masks and hoods, cleansing the world. Doing what she and Rodolphus were spending their nights in his bedroom dreaming about. The things they could be doing, the impact they could make… By instinct, she pressed her fingers against her wrist, but it was cool as always. The real thing wouldn't be, she knew – her uncle Urien had described the sensation to them. She supposed he oughtn't to have, and that she really should be disgusted that he had betrayed the Dark Lord's trust in such a way, but it was difficult. They all knew they ought to, but still none of them could keep from asking for more details very long. It was far too thrilling not to know. Evan kept claiming that his father kept the Dark Lord informed about their devotion, but she didn't dare to take his word for it. But the thought that He knew – that He appreciated… It made her heart race.

"You up again?"

His sleepy voice cut right through her confused thoughts, interrupting them brutally. Instantly, she was both frustrated and grateful for it. When she was alone with her thoughts like this she sometimes got the feeling that they were moving too fast for her to keep up; she felt dizzy, almost as if she was floating outside herself. Often, it took her breath away. At times such as tonight, it left her deeply anxious.

Deciding that she was done with thinking for the night, she crossed the creaking floor and crawled back into the bed, scrambling over his legs as she tried to pull his robe off of her at the same time. Getting caught in the too long hem, she lost her balance and fell right on top of him.

"Do you always have to do that?" he groaned, sleepily trying to disentangle their respective limbs from the sheets and robes, all the while muttering about never having met anyone who managed to fall over or drop things at an as alarming frequency as she often did ("even when you're sober, for Salazar's sake!")

Finding a way out of the mess that he'd only made worse, she smoothly slid down next to him.

"You were awake anyway," she said, and shrugged, absentmindedly picking at the robe she'd decided to keep on after all. She rather liked it (so he might not be getting it back), even though it was way too large for her and as a result revealed more than it covered now that she didn't have it tightly wrapped around her. A few weeks ago she wouldn't have been comfortable with lying next to him wearing it, but they had progressed well beyond that since.

"No, I wasn't."

"You were too."

"I was having a very good dream."

"Was I in it?" she asked, leaning over him suggestively and having no intention of letting him go back to sleep in the near future. She wanted to talk to him.

"No," he said, chuckling slightly.

"Can't have been that good then, can it?"

He laughed, properly awake now. "No, not that good."

"Thought so."

Thoughtfully, she laid back and watched him sitting up slightly, reaching for a cigarette from the package on the nightstand. Judging by how close to being empty the package was – his last one, she knew – they would have to leave the room soon so he could get it refilled in the foul-smelling place in Knockturn Alley that he and Evan frequented.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked as he lit the cigarette, seeing the cryptic look on her face. He had caught her awake before; sometimes they talked about it, sometimes she just returned to bed when she felt like it. Sometimes, like tonight, she clearly felt that she wanted to talk it through but didn't quite know where to begin.

"What if they finish it all without us?" she finally said earnestly, looking right at him. It was something that often tormented her – the mother of all her other worries that often came to her when she sat by his window long enough. What if everything happened while they were still at school, unable to contribute?

He smiled, looking at her in a way he only did when Evan or Wilkes most certainly were nowhere nearby.

"Don't worry, Belladonna ­–" he began, pausing momentarily to blow out a cloud of smoke. Despite her anxiousness, she had to grin a little at the nickname. When he had first started using it a few weeks ago she had mocked him for being such a Herbologist's son, but secretly she rather liked the sound of it.

"– they won't."

"No?" she asked, curling up close to him in a way she in her turn only did when they surely were alone.

"No." He shook his head, still smiling. "There'll be plenty left to do… fortunately for us, not as fortunately for the Mudbloods and traitors," he added, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

She beamed and he chuckled, offering her the cigarette. She took an as brief drag as she could before handing it back to him.

"But I know what you mean though," he added with a sigh, leaning back against the headboard and blowing out a new smoke cloud up towards the ceiling. She looked on as the smoke slowly covered the large hand-painted family tree that was rooted just by the headboard and covered the vaulted ceiling almost like a canopy. Since his family had the longstanding tradition of only marrying their own foreign cousins, she had never been able to find a common ancestor between the two of them on the tree, making him the only one of her friends that she wasn't directly related to.

"One does feel pretty damn useless here," he continued bitterly.

"At least you're of age!" She would only be turning sixteen this September, something that frustrated her immensely.

"Hasn't helped much, has it?" he bit back, taking a brief final drag and almost immediately blowing out the smoke carelessly in a manner she knew he only succumbed to when he was really irritated (he, who – no matter how much Evan tried to pretend otherwise – was the only one of them who could actually stand the taste, had taken it upon him to always take deep drags that really underlined this fact. She was pretty sure he didn't even need to fake it anymore.) She watched as he – using much unnecessary force – pressed down the not wholly finished cigarette in the ashtray on his bedside table. It was clear that he was still furious that he and Evan, who had both turned seventeen over the course of their sixth year, had still been told in no uncertain terms by Uncle Urien that they had better finish school before even thinking about joining up. She knew better than to tell it to him, but she was quite pleased that if she wasn't allowed to do anything, he wasn't either. Still, his frustration, once more confirming that he was just as eager as her, gave her a whole other kind of satisfaction as well: the kind that proved that she wasn't alone.

There was a time and a place for everything, however, and she had already listened to him fuming for over two hours the evening before and as satisfying as his frustration was, too much fast became deadly dull. Intending to steer him away from another lengthy rant that would only take away from her newfound contentment she turned on her side, nestling closer. He huffed slightly at her, knowing full well what she was trying to do. Knowing it would work, she wasn't deterred.

"Eventually, though…" she murmured.

"I know…" he said when he, after a few moment's quiet finally gave in. Satisfied, she leant her head on his chest, briefly closing her eyes as she felt his arm around her shoulders. Neither of them could stand to sleep in this position (he claimed that she kicked him in her sleep, which she did not do. It got far too suffocating though) – but during these talks, the contents of which were even more secret than everything else they did, half of which not even Evan and Wilkes knew – it felt nice.

"Just wait, Belladonna – we'll change the world…" he whispered in her ear, his egging voice sending a powerful surge of anticipation through her body.

"Soon," she demanded, looking up and him straight in the eye until he answered.

"Soon..." he agreed, getting that dreamy note to his voice that she loved listening to in nights like this.

"And by that time, we'll be ready," he added, nodding slightly towards the mountains of books and haphazard notes that were strewn on the floor. Suddenly, she noticed that her lost robe was thrown on top of the pile of Phineas Nigellus' old Potions books she that had half-borrowed, half-smuggled from Grimmauld Place after her last visit.

"We will…" she concurred, smiling into his chest. They really would; for months now, they had been deep in study of the Dark Arts, learning things school could never – or would never – teach them. Yes; when their time came, they would be ready.

"Tell me what it'll be like," she urged breathlessly after a moment, once more looking right at him. She had heard it many times before, but it didn't matter.

He grinned and, in that intoxicating voice that was the most soothing thing she knew, began the familiar tale of the victorious war that eventually would lay the groundwork for the new world. A world that would be beautiful and whole; purged to make it purer than anything their parents had been able to give them. That was what they were going to do – that was how they were going to leave their mark in history.

As he spoke, slowly lulling them both to sleep, she felt the last of the anxiousness leaving her for the time being.

No one did – and could never – understand completely. But he understood the best by far.


End file.
